"Professor" William C. Wilson and his Actina electric pocket battery for curing ocular disease.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the activities of the firm that manufactured and sold the Actina, the leading example of ophthalmic quackery in the era of the founding of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.


METHODS
Advertisements for the Actina in turn-of-the-century newspapers and magazines were studied, and additional related investigations were undertaken at leading historical societies in the United States and at the headquarters of the American Medical Association.


RESULTS
The Actina was widely advertised as a cure for most of life's ills, particularly those of the eye and ear. Its manufacturers claimed that electrical properties were the mechanism of the Actina's alleged therapeutic effects. However, research has shown that the instrument had no electrical properties, its manufacturers had no medical training, and that the Actina was useless as a therapeutic agent.


CONCLUSIONS
The firm that manufactured the Actina was located in Kansas City and was at the zenith of its success when the first meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology was held there in 1896. Its fraudulent activities sparked a continuing public outcry that contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The American Medical Association's Investigative Bureau was a major factor in the firm being put out of business in 1915 by the federal government.
Ferry
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AP
Museum of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, San Francisco, California, USA.
D000329:Advertising / Q000266:history; D004599:Electric Stimulation Therapy / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation; D005128:Eye Diseases / Q000266:history* / Q000628:therapy; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007615:Kansas; D009885:Ophthalmology / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation; D011781:Quackery / Q000266:history*